


In Hope I Breathe

by nsowlwrites97



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fake Major Character Death, First Kiss, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, This gets kind of dark, basically what if the apocalypse did happen, canon-divergent, don't worry it's a good ending, major angst, very short mention of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23739409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsowlwrites97/pseuds/nsowlwrites97
Summary: Aziraphale must have been the last living being on Earth.One month.That, apparently, was all the time it took for Heaven and Hell to utterly annihilate one another.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 120





	In Hope I Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned in the tags, this gets sort of dark before it gets better, but there's a very hopeful ending! There's a very brief mention of suicidal thoughts, so be aware. 
> 
> Title is from Queen's "All Dead, All Dead."

Aziraphale must have been the last living being on Earth.

Wasteland stretched in all directions, to the horizon and past it, a landscape so different now than it had been a mere month ago. If Aziraphale didn’t know better, he would have said he was on a different planet.

One month.

That, apparently, was all the time it took for Heaven and Hell to utterly annihilate one another.

Humanity had disappeared entirely within two days.

All other life on Earth didn’t last a week.

One month. It felt like years.

Aziraphale walked slowly. The world around him had lost all its color; it was now merely a gray landscape with a gray sky. There was no rubble to pick through; nearly everything had been reduced to ash and dust. Still, small signs that life had once existed here remained. A strip of car tire. A shard of china. A cracked sunglass lens.

Aziraphale stopped when he saw it, grief welling up so quickly and suddenly it paralyzed him. The lens wasn’t from Crowley’s glasses, he could see that immediately, but it might as well have been. He wondered where Crowley’s sunglasses were, whether they were in a similar state or worse, perhaps melted or reduced to sand. Maybe it was better not to know.

He had lost track of Crowley almost as soon as the fighting began, separated by the tide of angels and demons swarming Tadfield Air Base. In his last memory of Crowley the demon was reaching for him, mouth open in a shout Aziraphale couldn’t hear over the chaos. A moment later he’d been pulled away by the crowd of demons, and though Aziraphale tried to follow, by the time he’d fought his way through Crowley was nowhere to be seen.

Aziraphale rubbed his eyes, trying to stop the tears. Without looking at the broken sunglass lens again, he walked on.

He was somewhere on the outskirts of London. _No,_ he corrected himself, _the outskirts of what once was London._ Memories flashed through him; he saw himself, a vessel for divine rage, slicing through demon and angel alike with his flaming sword. How many had he killed? He had been angry, so much angrier than he had ever thought possible, filled with rage at these beings who thought themselves above humanity, who thought they had any right to fight a meaningless war in the place humanity had made their own, in a place none of them were worthy of. Who knew the battle would mean the end of life on Earth, and waged it anyway.

The anger had drained away and now Aziraphale just felt weary, filled with a sorrow so deep it ached in his very soul. 

As he got closer to London proper the remnants of humanity became more obvious. A scorched road sign, lying flat on the ground. The shell of a small building, blackened with radiation. The frame of a car seat, the car itself nowhere to be seen.

The nuclear weapons had been deployed that first day, but most of the damage had been done by the war itself. Legions of angels and legions of demons had soon discovered that they too could inflict nuclear levels of damage and, to Aziraphale’s horror, reveled in the ability.

Aziraphale had hid, once he witnessed that. He couldn’t stop a whole battalion at once, never mind the hundreds remaining at the time. He had miracled himself a hole in the ground – his own personal grave, he’d thought helplessly – and hid, listening to the sounds of angels and demons dying above him. Shame and terror and grief warred within him, and yet still he lay there, counting the days to keep himself sane, unable to do anything but wait.

Eventually, the noise faded, and only deathly silence remained. Aziraphale waited another three days before he emerged, and now here he was, walking by a car seat no one else would ever see again.

Was it possible he truly was the last being alive? The world around him was so quiet, so desolate. There was nothing here for him now. Everything he’d ever known was gone.

 _Crowley,_ he thought. He wondered what the demon’s final moments had been like. Had he been caught up in the slaughter like so many others, killed quickly? Had the demons taken him for a traitor and killed him themselves, with purpose? Had he tried to run from the fighting, like Aziraphale had, and failed?

Aziraphale stopped walking suddenly. If Crowley had run, if he had hid, like Aziraphale had - and that did seem the most likely course of action he would have taken - if all that was true… Crowley could still be alive.

It seemed impossible. But if Crowley was out there, if he could be found, Aziraphale had to try.

He’d tried it once before, in fact, at the beginning of the battle, but it had drawn a horde of bloodthirsty demons onto him, and so was out of the question after that. Until now.

Aziraphale reached out with his senses, searching for Crowley, using enough power that he was unintentionally broadcasting his own location to anyone who might be looking for a signal. Out and out he went, feeling nothing. No angels, no demons, no life.

Tears sprang to his eyes once more, but he blinked them away. Maybe Crowley was just being cautious, hiding himself. Aziraphale would keep searching, keep his senses open. Keep broadcasting.

He walked on.

There were no more buildings in London. There were only the occasional shells, sagging single-story heaps of stone or charred twists of metal. The streets had been covered with the ash of everything else. Aziraphale didn’t know whether he was walking along a road or over what had once been someone’s shop, someone’s home.

It didn’t matter anymore. He walked on.

Something was shutting down inside him, turning numb, draining away. Perhaps it was the pain, the sorrow. Perhaps he’d overflowed with it and now it was streaming away, leaving only emptiness behind.

Aziraphale didn’t know how long it took him to realize he’d fallen to his knees. He looked up, and the never-changing landscape looked back. It mocked him, derided him, taunted him. _You allowed this to happen,_ it seemed to say to him. _This is your fault. If you’d been stronger, faster, if you’d trusted Crowley from the start…_

A shuddering sob ran through him. He looked down at his hands, blury through his tears, trembling without his permission. He’d left the flaming sword behind a long time ago. He hoped it’d been destroyed along with everything else.

He should have known Heaven didn’t care about Earth any more than Hell did. He should have known God wouldn’t care to speak to him. He should have listened to Crowley. He should have gone to Alpha Centauri with him when he’d had the chance.

But he hadn’t. And now Crowley was dead and gone along with everyone and everything else, and he was alone.

His hands pressed into the ash as he screamed. He’d been wrong, before. It hadn’t been the pain leaving him. Maybe just the capacity to deal with it, because the pain was like a black hole, sucking him in and down, stretching him to his limits and beyond, unrelenting and unyielding. Impossible to escape.

He wished he was gone along with everything else.

The thought flashed through him, bright and hot. It was not a new one, but he felt it more keenly now than before. There was literally nothing left to live for. What was the point of all this pain if he couldn’t fix anything?

He didn’t know how long he spent screaming at nothing. His voice grew hoarse and his energy drained away. He ended up on the ground, curled up on his side. The tears ran dry, eventually, and he lay there sniffling, rubbing ash between his fingers. His thoughts drifted and split apart, spiraling into random threads before dissipating again.

Time passed. It could have been an hour or a day, a year or three. It didn’t matter to Aziraphale, not any longer.

Someone shouted in the distance. Aziraphale startled slightly, lifting his head with a sort of vague interest. His imagination, he realized. He put his head back down.

“Aziraphale!” The shout was closer now. Aziraphale recoiled from it, screwing his eyes shut and curling up tighter. Wasn’t it enough that he had lost everything? Did his mind need to start playing cruel tricks on him as well?

“Aziraphale!” And oh, it sounded like Crowley, too. The tears began to pool behind his closed eyes, and he fought to keep them back.

He jerked at the feel of hands on him. “Angel! Aziraphale!”

Aziraphale opened his eyes. Crowley stared down at him, and his yellow eyes were scared and sad, so horribly sad, and it was far too much, and he wasn’t really here anyway. Aziraphale made a noise that might have been a “no” in the back of his throat and squeezed his eyes shut again.

“Aziraphale, it’s okay,” Crowley whispered. “I’m here. You’re here. We’re alive.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “You’re not here,” he muttered. “Please, just leave me alone.”

“I’m here, Aziraphale, I promise you.” The grip on his shoulder tightened. An absent part of Aziraphale’s mind recognized that he must truly be insane, if the hallucination felt so real. “Please, just… look at me.”

“No,” Aziraphale resisted. “You’re not real.”

“Angel, please…”

“No,” Aziraphale muttered. “No, no, no. You’re gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.” He was crying again, the kind of tears that strangled, that made it hard to speak, to breathe. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, put his hands over his ears, and tried to block out the noise. The phantom was saying something, but he refused to listen. Was his mind to be the final thing to go?

The hallucination stopped speaking and took a shuddery breath above him. The pressure on his shoulder disappeared, and there was silence. For a moment, Aziraphale dared believe it was over.

“Do you remember when I came up to you on top of that wall in Eden?” Aziraphale didn’t respond, didn’t open his eyes, but Crowley – not-Crowley, Aziraphale reminded himself – continued anyway. “Did you ever wonder why?”

Aziraphale frowned despite himself. He’d never asked. He’d always just assumed Crowley had wanted someone to talk to, and he’d been the only one around.

“You were watching Adam and Eve as they went out into the world. Almost like you wanted to make sure they’d be all right. Even though your God had just kicked them out.” Something in Aziraphale’s chest tightened. “So I went up to you, and made conversation, and you told me you’d given them your flaming sword,” Crowley paused. “And I realized I’d been right. And I thought maybe, maybe _this_ angel has the capacity for love, even if the rest of them are complete arseholes. And maybe, just maybe, if he could love the fallen humans, maybe he could love a fallen angel. Maybe he could love me.” Crowley huffed a laugh. “I was very alone at the time, you know.”

Slowly, Aziraphale opened his eyes. Crowley met his gaze, a sad smile on his face and tears in his eyes. Aziraphale looked at him, really looked, taking in every line of his face, the crinkles around his eyes, the set of his jaw. He didn’t think even his imagination could come up with such a perfect replica.

“Crowley?” he whispered.

“I’m here, angel,” Crowley said softly.

“Crowley!” In less than a second Aziraphale had Crowley wrapped in the fiercest hug he could ever remember giving, and the tears came before he could stop them, flowing in earnest as he drank Crowley in, as hope and relief and love, endless love, flooded him from head to toe.

Finally, Aziraphale pulled back. Crowley’s eyes were shining with all the same emotions Aziraphale felt. He didn’t release his grip around the back of Crowley’s neck as he took him in; clothes torn and burned and covered in dust, face weary and clearly filled with sorrow, eyes that had aged a thousand years in the single month since Aziraphale had last seen him – in short, a mirror of Aziraphale himself.

“How?” Aziraphale asked, voice trembling. “How are you here?”

“I picked up your signal,” Crowley replied. That hadn’t been what Aziraphale was asking, and he knew that Crowley knew it, but he let it go. He wasn’t keen on recounting his own experiences from the past month. There would be time for that later. Right now all that mattered was that Crowley was here, and he was alive. He was _alive._ Aziraphale pulled him into another hug.

“Is it just us, now?” Aziraphale asked into Crowley’s shoulder.

He felt Crowley shudder slightly and tightened his grip. He was never letting Crowley go again. Not ever.

“I think so,” Crowley whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale began, and before he knew it the tears were flowing freely once more. “I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you. I should have known Heaven didn’t care. I’m sorry for all those things I said – I should’ve gone with you to Alpha Centauri when you asked. I should’ve…”

“Shhhh. You did, in the end. Try and help me stop it, I mean. I don’t know if there’s anything more we could’ve done.”

“I made the wrong choice. Maybe if we’d gotten there sooner, figured things out faster, worked together properly like we’d said…”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Crowley’s voice was soft, defeated. There was nothing they could do. It was over and done.

They sat there in silence for a long while, not moving, just clinging to one another, afraid that if they let go the other would be yanked away, disappear forever. They had lost everything else. Aziraphale felt extremely lucky not to have lost the most important thing.

Aziraphale pulled back so he was looking Crowley in the eye. “I want you to know,” he began, heart stuttering. He had to say this. He should have said it years ago. It shouldn’t have taken the apocalypse for him to understand what was truly important, what was truly good and right. “You are the most important thing to me,” he continued. “I know I’ve never really shown it, and I’m sorry for pushing you away. I was trying to keep you safe. I didn’t…” he swallowed, voice catching. “I love you Crowley, truly, I do. I think I have for far longer than I even realized. I just… I hope you know.”

Crowley’s face softened. “I know, angel,” he murmured, squeezing Aziraphale’s hands. “Of course I know. And you know I feel the same way, don’t you?”

Aziraphale looked at him. Thinking back, he supposed he did know, and had known for a long time. But he’d never let himself think it, never let himself acknowledge what was happening between them. He’d had a fog over his mind.

Well. For the first time in perhaps all of the six thousand years he’d known Crowley, the fog had lifted.

“I know.” Aziraphale said, and his voice was strong. “I know.”

Crowley smiled, and they sat there for a long while, breathing each other in. The sky grew darker, marginally, and when it began to grow light again Crowley asked, “What now?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I don’t know. Earth is…”

Crowley nodded. “It’s not the place we knew.”

“Do you think anything survived?”

Crowley looked around. The grayness of the sky seemed to bleed into the grayness of the ground, an endless expanse of nothingness. “It’s possible. But all the radiation…”

Aziraphale could feel it, if he tuned in to it, a thrumming energy that permeated the planet. Even life in the oceans would have been killed by it, if not directly by the angels and demons battling above them. Aziraphale’s eyes pricked with tears again.

“What’s that?” Crowley said suddenly, pulling Aziraphale out of his thoughts. He stood, drawing Aziraphale with him, clinging to his hand, neither willing to let go of the other. Crowley led them forward a ways before crouching down and reaching out to brush the ash off a piece of broken porcelain.

“Angel…” Crowley held up the piece with exceeding gentleness in both his hands and his eyes.

Aziraphale stared. It couldn’t be.

Slowly, not quite believing it, Aziraphale reached out and took the piece from Crowley. He held it in his palm, stared at it. It was no longer white, covered in soot spots and a thin film of gray ash, and it was only a piece of the original, but it was unmistakable.

It was the angel-wing handle to Aziraphale’s favorite mug.

And if this was here, then that meant…

Aziraphale looked past the broken handle, at his feet. Could they truly be standing where the bookshop had once stood? He flexed his feet a couple times, sending up soft plumes of ash.

“Are we…?”

“Seems so.”

Aziraphale thought of all his books, of a blast of radiation turning the shop and everything in it to dust. Everything in there had been paper, wood. It wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Crowley stood, squeezing his hand. He seemed to know what Aziraphale was thinking. “It burned down, remember?” he said gently. “It was already gone.”

Aziraphale shuddered at the reminder, swallowed painfully. Nodded. “And yet…” he looked back at the porcelain in his hand. “This survived. Twice.” He looked at Crowley. “And what are the chances? That we ended up here?”

“Even not knowing where you were going, you found your way home.” The look in Crowley’s eyes was so soft, so caring, it was almost too much. There were too many emotions swirling around in Aziraphale’s chest– sorrow and pain and heartbreak, but at the same time a kind of lightness, Crowley’s love lifting him above the devastation and destruction.

“Home,” Aziraphale echoed quietly. “I’m afraid it can’t be, anymore.” Before Crowley could say anything, Aziraphale turned to him. “But it’s all right. I have a new home, now.”

A sparkle appeared in Crowley’s eyes. “Oh yeah? Where might that be?”

“Anywhere that I’m with you,” Aziraphale said, and kissed him.

Crowley melted into him, and it was like coming back to life. All the horror, the fear, the despair of the last month began to fade, and hope and love, so much love, began to shine through.

“Angel,” Crowley gasped when they parted, foreheads resting together. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve wanted you to do that.”

Aziraphale smirked. “And you’ve no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

Crowley laughed. The sound filled the air, brightening the world around them, so that the layer of ash in the sky seemed to thin, and the world felt a little less desolate.

“Crowley, look!” Aziraphale pointed. There, standing out against the ash, was a splash of green. Aziraphale pulled Crowley forward, and they crouched down next to the small shoot.

Life. The Earth had not become completely uninhabitable after all.

Crowley reached a trembling finger forward, brushing oh-so-gently against the tiny beginnings of a leaf.

“Hardy little things, aren’t they?” Aziraphale said happily. Hope was blooming in his chest. He felt like he was soaring.

Crowley nodded dumbly. Then he pointed a stern finger at the shoot. “You are the hope for the entire plant kingdom. Maybe even all life. You better grow damn well, or you’ll have me to answer to, and trust me, you do _not_ want to see me when I’m angry.” The shoot shuddered slightly.

“Oh, stop it, don’t scare it,” Aziraphale admonished him.

But then it seemed to stand up a little taller, as if declaring its readiness to take on the responsibility. Crowley grinned. “See? Just needed a reminder of what’s on the line.”

They stood. As far as Aziraphale could tell, the small sprout was the only sign of life for miles around. But the world was a big place. There could be others. It might take a long time, but Aziraphale was sure that eventually, life would cover this planet once more.

“What do you think, angel? Should we stay and help?”

Aziraphale considered. He’d done a fair bit of good, in his six thousand years on Earth. And now that there was no Heaven to answer to, he could do a lot more. But if there was one thing he’d learned, it was that sometimes he had to step back and let the humans help themselves. Help each other. They seemed to come out quite strong that way.

“I think,” Aziraphale began, “that life is hardy. It’s already growing once more. Maybe we should let life find its own way. Without interference, for good or for evil.”

Crowley nodded. “We can come back in a thousand years, see how it’s getting on.” He considered the shoot at their feet. “It’ll be very different from the world we knew,” he warned.

“It will, but no less beautiful for it.” Aziraphale smiled at him. “And after all, so will Alpha Centauri.”

Crowley grinned, and opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He seemed to be at a loss for words.

“I hear they have great nightlife,” Aziraphale teased. “What do you say, dear?”

Crowley kissed him. Aziraphale smiled into it, wrapping his arms around the demon. He hadn’t known that it was possible to be filled with so much love.

“I take it that’s a yes?” Aziraphale asked, slightly breathless, when they parted.

“What do you think?” Crowley growled. Aziraphale smiled, and looked at the sky.

“Which direction is it in?”

Instead of pointing up, Crowley pointed slightly down, somewhere off to their left. “Can’t actually see it from here,” he said. “It’s in the southern sky.”

“Well then,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s get a wiggle-on, shall we?”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Wiggle-on. Honestly, angel, do you have to choose the least cool phrase in all of existence?” 

Aziraphale squeezed his hand. “What? I think it’s perfectly respectable.”

They began to walk away, bickering lightly, ready to head for the stars. Behind them, the small green shoot of an apple tree grew a few more centimeters, taking strength from the depth of their love. They didn’t know it, but that love had encouraged the shoot to persevere out from under the ashes, to reach for the sun. As it grew, the tree would remember that love, and pass it on to other trees, other plants, other life. And so when Crowley and Aziraphale returned a thousand years later, they would find a world reborn, a world teeming with life, life that was so full of love it would fill the air like oxygen.

 _Thank you,_ the world will say to them, and whether or not they hear it, they will realize that they should have known all along. Earth is sturdy. Life is tenacious. And love… well, love is the reason for it all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Alpha Centauri really is in the southern sky! It's at about -61° declination (aka celestial latitude). It's also the closest star system to Earth, so they're not going far :) Thanks for reading and please leave a comment, it'd mean the world to me!


End file.
